


We Stood a Moment So in a Strange World

by SBG



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, F/M, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2013-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-08 21:34:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/766268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SBG/pseuds/SBG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Catherine has Steve, but standing at the funeral ceremony for one of his closest friends, she begins to wonder if that's the truth at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Stood a Moment So in a Strange World

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to annieke for the read-through and helpful comments. Title from Robert Frost's _A Boundless Moment_. Tag to 3.20. While it is not anti-Catherine, I'm pretty much a dedicated Steve/Danny kind of gal so it's not exactly pro-Catherine, either. (Show might keep on putting Steve with Cath, but I will keep putting him with Danny. You can't stop the signal, hee.) 
> 
> I struggled with how to categorize this one, so any thoughts if I haven't accurately labeled it wouldn't be rejected.

Catherine Rollins had had fairly typical pivotal moments in her life and she remembered most of them as faded snapshots. The slight panic at the spots of blood on her panties from her first period, despite having gone through the birds and bees and the _girl, you’ll be a woman soon_ talks at school and at home with her mom. The way her palms had felt so prickly and stomach fluttered as if there were actual butterflies flitting around in it as Joey Speedman walked to her front door for her very first date, and then, later, when he leaned in to kiss her goodnight in a truly awful, awkward first kiss. The way her palms had felt so prickly and stomach fluttered when she approached the Navy booth at her high school’s career fair during her senior year. The thrill of accomplishment at discovering her aptitude for digging deeper and using tech, which led to an obvious fit into intelligence work. 

The day she met Steve McGarrett.

The funny thing about meeting Steve was that most of the details of where and when escaped her, but she remembered how her breath caught at the sharpness in his eyes and the conversely soft lay of his lashes. She remembered that the second he laid that absurd pick-up line on her she knew was in for the long haul with him. He’d had her hook, line and sinker with that silly grin and, “Hey, maybe you want to sleep with me sometime?”

They hadn’t slept together, not right away. Not for a good long while, actually. Though she had known they’d get there eventually, Cath fully ascribed to the friends-first policy when it came to guys she thought … knew … would be more to her than a fun lay now and then. She’d known it might have been foolish to become emotionally invested where it was obvious Steve wasn’t ready, but he had a natural charisma impossible for mere mortals to avoid and enough unpretentiousness to not quite realize how _much_ he impacted others. They worked out as she had known they would. They transitioned from friends to friends with benefits to now both of them being in the same place long enough to call it an actual relationship, in a progression that was effortless. 

Standing there at the funeral of one of Steve’s dearest friends, a friend Catherine hadn’t known existed until Steve had come to her with his plan to appeal to set up the exchange, she was out of sorts. As she watched Steve comfort Freddie Hart’s parents, widow and child, she felt sticky and uncomfortably warm under the hot sun, her uniform too heavy. She wasn’t a stranger to Steve’s depth of emotion; she thought she’d seen him at his most wrecked, face hiding nothing. She’d never seen the level of utter devastation he was showing now, though, and she almost gasped at how easily Steve told Freddie’s daughter he’d loved her daddy. 

This was the complete wrong place and time to think it, she knew it. Yet a stab of pain that had nothing to do with her bruised ribs hit her as she considered how, in their years of knowing each other, through their shifting relationship, Steve had never explicitly stated his feelings for her the way he just had for his dead friend. Not in public, but also not in private. Her head buzzed with this, as if it were somehow appropriate here and now to think of her own wants. It wasn’t. She couldn’t shut her brain off.

She understood well the camaraderie between team members, close knit out of necessity but also something much deeper – absolute trust that one could count on those around to fight to the death, not just for God and country. For a symbiotic kind of patriot love. Just as Freddie had, for Steve. She didn’t know why it was striking her so deeply right now; the stress of the retrieval gone sideways, almost a failure, and the inherent grief that permeated a funeral, maybe. Steve was more about actions than words, always had been, and nothing about the love he’d had for Freddie was outside the norm. 

Catherine had never needed him to say the word, she thought, until she’d heard him say it to someone else. About someone else.

But it was when Steve looked up, eyes glistening so wet she could see how he was barely keeping it together even at a distance, that it started to make some kind of sense. He wasn’t looking at her, but behind her and to the left. Catherine turned her head slightly, saw Kono and Chin standing there. Danny was between them, solemn and somehow the most there of all three, his face grim, uncomfortable and aggrieved as he stared at Steve. She didn’t know him the way she knew Steve, and yet there it was – that stabbing pain she was ready to name a precursor to a brand new pivotal moment in her life. 

The intuitive gut of hers that had helped her find her naval career path pinged strong, and that was all it was. She had no proof, no true reason, but the inkling was too strong to ignore. Cath studied Danny’s face for a moment, not more than a few blinks, and in her head she heard him over the phone, asking about his boy. Not Steve. _My boy_. She returned her attention forward and remembered it had only been a few minutes, separated by a huge distance, an ocean, from Danny using that term for Steve and Steve using it for Freddie. The likelihood of that being anything other than a coincidence, maybe a bizarre happenstance of the strong kinship she was already very aware existed between them, was slim.

Still, all logic aside, she knew it as sure as she knew anything. Steve had told her early on, during the friends-only stage and after she’d gained his trust, that he was bi. She’d never asked, but had felt honored to be told. She had also never known him to be with a man. She saw in looking at him now, and remembering the anguish of finding his friend mutilated, violated after death, that Steve had _loved_ Freddie the way Freddie had loved his wife. The way that she herself loved Steve. That was as far as it had gone. Steve had never slept with Freddie. She was nearly positive it had been a one-way deal, if only because Steve would have told her otherwise. She wanted to believe that, though a little mental voice started screaming at her how Steve had never mentioned Freddie at all, let alone something so personal about him, them. 

The idea that Danny might _love_ Steve in that way had never occurred to her before. She’d heard the jokes about marriage, made them herself, but now her insides were telling her that it wasn’t outside the realm of probability, though she couldn’t possibly know Danny’s sexual orientation. That part of it didn’t much matter. The unknown that was most important was whether or not that maybe-love was reciprocated, and she could find that out. She could use her investigative skills. She just didn’t know if she wanted to.

Steve returned to her side, and the funeral continued. Catherine couldn’t focus on it, only the conjecture she’d invented herself. Lost in thoughts she didn’t want to be having, a mental replay of every interaction between Steve and Danny, she was startled when the small crowd began breaking up, the ceremony over. Steve bumped his arm into her shoulder and when she looked at him he wore a faint smile, the kind that didn’t match the stormy sadness in his eyes. He bobbed his head toward the rest of his civilian team, clapped Joe on the shoulder before he moved away from both of them. She watched him go a second, then moved to join him. She had never before felt quite like a satellite to his greater gravitational pull as much as she did in this moment.

“Thanks for coming,” Steve said to the others, voice thick with everything he’d gone through these last weeks and days. “You didn’t have to.”

 _“Ohana, brah,”_ Chin said with feeling.

Catherine stood next to Chin and silently watched Kono nod and draw Steve into a quick hug. Watched as Danny held back for a second, eyes fixed on Steve as if he could weigh and measure mental health through visual assessment, then mumbled something she couldn’t quite catch. By the way Steve’s shoulders slumped just for a heartbeat and how he pulled Danny into a tight hug, buried his face into Danny’s neck, it had been something he’d needed to hear. She stared, half mesmerized by the show of affection and support and half upset by it. After a second, she had to look away, embarrassed at the levels of insecurity and suspicion she was experiencing. This wasn’t her. She had Steve and it didn’t matter if Danny had feelings for him that went beyond friendship. If. 

She flicked her attention to the family still by the casket and when she looked back, Steve and Danny were stepping out of their embrace. One of Danny’s hands lingered at the small of Steve’s back, one of Steve’s at the nape of Danny’s neck. Catherine chewed her lip, processed the information. 

“Need to unwind?” Kono asked. “A few beers?”

“Not tonight,” Steve said, shaking his head and shooting Cath a glance. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Catherine wasn’t proud of the rush of relief Steve’s declination sent through her. She knew how exhausted he was, how he needed rest more than anything. She’d been there with him, all the way.

“Whatever you need,” Chin said, his familiarity of loss clear in his tone. “Let us know.”

“I will. Thanks again, guys. Really. He was…”

“Something special,” Danny said, filling in where Steve dropped off. He sounded ragged, as if he had somehow absorbed some of Steve’s emotions as they’d hugged. “He’d have to be, if you were that close.”

Steve closed his eyes and jerked his head in a stunted nod, but said nothing as Danny patted him on the back and guided him toward Catherine. 

Catherine smiled at Danny, but his attention was only for Steve. That was okay. She was fairly sure the smile on her face was brittle at best, and he would see through it. _My boy_. She would always hear Danny saying that now, and it meant so much more than she wanted to admit. She led Steve away from his friends, Danny, and to her car.

“Yours or mine?” she asked.

“Yours,” Steve said. “I can’t … it’s too…”

Real. All of this had called back not only the loss of Freddie, but of Steve’s father as well. His house had ghosts. Catherine frowned, unhappy it had taken three years of bearing this weight for Steve to finally unload some of it. Unhappy that she thought now of how it was at that time, too, that he’d met Danny and begun to heal, without her help. It was all connected, somehow, and her inquisitive mind wouldn’t stop finding more dots to draw lines between. It had been Danny … and Chin and Kono, but mostly Danny, she thought, that had kept Steve afloat during that time, maybe as a substitute and a distraction at first, but then more. So much more.

Steve climbed into the passenger seat and Catherine looked back at the funeral scene one last time. It had cleared of people, except Danny stayed off to the side and gazed at the empty chairs. Almost as if he sensed her eyes on him, he looked over. From the distance, she could see the empathy and, yes, the love, as he looked at Steve huddled in her car. She told herself he was squinting against the sun, because though her suspicions were blooming hard and fast, she was not ready to allow them to be more than that. She didn’t know if she ever would be.

The drive home was quiet. Steve had done enough talking lately. If she knew him, and she _did_ , there would be some necessary action soon. She couldn’t say what it would be, but she’d be there for whatever it was, just like always. Just like Steve always needed her to be. This time, next time, all of the times, it would be her. Catherine was restless, a desperate feeling like she had to prove in her own mind how intertwined she and Steve were, and she hated it. As she parked in front of the house, she sat for a moment while Steve got out, headed slowly for her front door and let himself in. She took a deep breath, followed and found him standing in the kitchen, staring at nothing with his hat in his hands.

“Tea?” she asked.

“Beer,” he said.

“You know where it is.”

Catherine wandered to her bedroom, unbuttoning her heavy, too-hot jacket with one hand as she went. She tossed her lid on the dresser and quickly shimmied out of the uniform, unsurprised that when she’d barely done stepped from the skirt, Steve was right there. He wrapped his arms around her, careful of the tender bruises, just careful, careful. He turned her to bring them face to face, his own expression hollow. Her heart broke all over again, seeing him this way. She put a hand to the side of his face.

Steve smiled and kissed her, tender and sweet. He tasted of bitter yeast, beer. He steered her backwards, until her legs hit the bed and he helped her gently lay, then removed his own clothes with speed that sometimes she’d joke about. Today, it felt like the act was part of a mission Steve had sent himself on, an order to obey, and that was stupid because there was no reason to think this was in any way different to usual.

“I love you,” she said, foolish, hopeful.

Steve didn’t say a word, _the_ word. He eased into the bed next to her, hands trailing over her skin, thumb brushing lightly over the bruises on her left side and then hooking at the waistband of her underwear and tugging them down. The look on his face was somehow both broken and blank, not truly focused on her even as he leaned down to kiss her again. As she gave Steve her body and her heart, she wondered if he was really there, wondered if it was her that he needed. 

She arched slightly and closed her eyes when Steve slid into her. Saw him with his arms wrapped around Danny, the pair of them a beautiful, horrible portrait of mutual need, Steve tucking his face into Danny’s neck and hanging on as if for dear life and Danny holding them both steady.


End file.
